Road user charges for EVs: Many yet to sign up, with deadline just days away

No time to paws. Photo / Cole Slawson

Road user charges (RUCs) for electric vehicles were officially introduced on April 1, but Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced a two-month grace period before fines would kick in. That extended deadline is now just days away – but NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) revealed uptake figures to the Herald.

Only just over half of EV owners have registered for RUCs and pre-paid – as required – for their first block of mileage (which costs $76 per 1000km for a full EV and $38 per 1000km for a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle or “PHEV”).

Specifically, as of Friday morning, 59,523 had purchased their first RUC licence, out of a total 105,000 EV and PHEV owners.

NZTA sent a wave of reminder notices late last week.

5000 fines issued in 2023

Fines for not displaying a current RUC licence range between $200 and $400, while late RUC payments incur a 10 per cent penalty on the amount owing.

Anyone who tries to cheat the system by fiddling with an odometer faces a fine of up to $15,000.

The penalties aren’t an idle threat. Last year, some 5000 fines were issued to light diesel vehicle owners, NZTA says.

Police or someone doing your warrant of fitness will be able to immediately tell if you’re up to date with RUCs via a sticker on your windscreen, issued when you buy your first licence.

Where to head

You can purchase RUCs via NZTA’s website (which will incur a $12.44 admin fee) or over-the-counter at agents including the AA and VTNZ (with a $13.71 admin fee).

EVs have previously been exempt from RUCs, to encourage uptake to a 2 per cent of New Zealand’s vehicle fleet target, which has now been hit.

Both Labour and National supported the end of the exemption, which would otherwise leave a $2 billion hole in New Zealand’s roading and road maintenance budget (fed by road user charges and fuel tax) as cars electrify.

$1000 per year for the average driver

Electric vehicle owners will immediately notice the difference.

The AA says the average Kiwi driver clocks just under 12,000km a year, which works out to $912 a year in EV RUCs – or probably the best part of $1000 once admin fees are included (only one admin fee is paid when buying multiple blocks of 1000km).

And the Road Trip app provides an everyday example of how RUCs will impact EV running costs.

A return trip from Auckland to Tauranga in a Tesla Model 3 would cost about $26 in charging today (assuming cheaper charging at home over faster but more expensive public chargers).

With road user chargers, which would come in at $32, the cost of that Auckland-Tauranga return jaunt would rise from $26 to $58.

(As a comparison, Roadtrip calculates in a roughly comparable petrol car, the BMW 330i, Auckland-Tauranga return would cost about $90 return at $2.83 per litre. See some charts on lifetime EV versus petrol car ownership and running costs here.)

An unfair share?

EV owners say they’re happy to pay their share – but some, including the AA, the Motor Industry Association, the Motor Trade Association and others in a submission to the Government, have said that an electric vehicle will pay 95 per cent more in road user charges than a fuel-efficient car pays in petrol tax.

And some PHEV owners say their cars’ small, often fast-degrading batteries mean they mostly run on petrol (the Government did acknowledge the double-tax criticism when it lowered the initial $58/1000km RUC rate for plug-in hybrids to $38/1000km).

The counter-argument is that EVs are heavier than equivalent petrol cars, so cause more wear-and-tear on roads, and will be one of several elements spurring the need for power generation and grid upgrades (which EV advocates argue will have the long-term benefit of boosting NZ’s balance of trade and energy security as petrol imports lower).

Hybrids that don’t need to plug-in, like the Toyota Prius, don’t need to pay RUCs. Neither does any electric vehicle under 1000kg or over 3000kg (heavy electric vehicles will maintain their exemption until December 31, 2025).

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.